What’s a small moment from your past that you still think about years later?
I was twelve, lying on the top bunk in a dormitory at my prep school in Northumberland, when I made a discovery that has stayed with me for more than fifty years.
I was pulling at a piece of skin on my big toe. It hurt. I could stop, which I did. But then it occurred to me that I could carry on if I wanted to. There was nothing physically preventing me. The choice was entirely mine.
It was such a small thing, but the implications seemed enormous.
I could choose to do something, or choose not to. I could comply with an instruction, or refuse. For the most part, I complied. Boarding school was hardly an environment that encouraged disobedience. But from that moment onwards, somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought: But I don’t have to.
And then I began thinking about the other boys in the dormitory. We lived together, wore the same uniform, followed the same timetable and were expected to behave in much the same way. The school appeared to operate on the assumption that we were, or ought to be, identical.
But we weren’t. How could we be? If we were all the same, why didn’t we all get the same score in a spelling test?
Each of us could make different choices. We could decide to do something or not to do it. And those decisions, however small, would help make us different people.
I remember the exhilaration of that thought. There were possibilities everywhere, even within the rather confined world of a boarding school.
More than fifty years later, I still think about that moment. Not because I subsequently became a great rebel. I didn’t. I’ve generally been quite happy to follow rules when they make sense.
But I have never entirely lost the thought that first occurred to me on that top bunk: I don’t have to.
The freedom to choose, and the responsibility for what follows, are part of what makes each of us unique.
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